Sponges
A new species of sponge Spongosorites calcicola Picton and Goodwin, 2007, from Rathlin Island.
There are about 200 sorts of sponges in Northern Ireland waters – but you couldn’t use any of them as a bath sponge! Sponges and sea squirts are among the groups of marine animals that are still very poorly known. Sponges in particular often cannot be identified from living material because their external appearance is not known.
Originally, sponges were named from preserved material which had lost its colour after death, when stored either dry or immersed in alcohol. We are now filling some of these gaps in our knowledge by photographing new specimens before they are collected. The sponge collections have been greatly enlarged by research conducted in the last few years and now consist of about 5,000 specimens. Several new species have been described during this research.
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